Monthly Archives: May 2011

This site has featured a number of posts about HDNL, also known as Home Delivery Network, now known as YODEL. Initially I posted about how a delivery of mine was tossed over a gate and left in the rain, and that post alone has generated nearly 500 comments from equally annoyed customers and also from HDNL drivers. Some of the drivers come to defend their employer, some come to admit that there’s a problem, some come to abuse people – all of which of course helps the website to rank even better in Google for HDNL, so thanks for that!

One driver however has been particularly fervent in his postings. Sometimes he uses the name ‘Matty’, sometimes he uses the name ‘Dan’, but he always uses the email address bigtreewitheyes@talk21.com and he says he works for HDNL in Newton Abbot, in the Heathfield depot. Dan, Matty, whatever he calls himself, has been posting comments on this site since December 30th 2009, so he’s obviously a big fan.

In that time he has made over 40 comments, most of which containing abuse of some form. Let’s have a look at some of the things that Matty, Dan, bigtreewitheyes@talk21.com, the guy who works for HDNL, or rather YODEL, at Newton Abbot, has said:

The HDNL employee then decided that going on a personal offensive was the best option, as his defence of Home Delivery Network wasn’t really cutting much ice with the dissatisfied customers on the site. He went on to add:

You need to do yourself a favour, get your ugly head away from the computer, pull back the curtains, and see some day light.
Theres a whole world out there you know!

Loser.

Matty/Dan then turned his attention to some of the many customers who had posted on the blog, offending them too:

Lisa,
As an employee of hdnl, and knowing the policies as I do, I can honestly say I dont beleive a word you had just typed!

You dont get it do you Kate.
I bet you have caused a fuss at the depot before, over your unreasonable demands havent you?
I dont get paid to put up with rude, abusive, mouthy, and threatening people like you, and if I have prior experience with a customer behaving like that, I wont take the parcel.
So maybe you should look at your attitude towards people, you obviously see hard working delivery drivers as a bit of scum that you can abuse.
Ive got news for you love!!
And its all bad!!!

Although Matty/Dan did find time to have a swipe at me in the same comment, he can multitask like that:

Mr Daz (wanker) I hate to break it to you, but out of the MILLIONS of parcels delivered every year, a few hundred complaints, whilst regretable, are just a tiny tiny percentage, with alot being made up of pathetic, the world owes me everything, type of people like yourself and bignosekate.

After his sideswipe at me, the Home Delivery Network driver went on the full offensive, abusing me for my job, no less.

Building websires = lonely nerds
You hide away from the world slagging off everybody, and everything.

Your a horrible little man, with no life.

‘losers’ like me ‘flock’ to your pathetic site to have a laugh at the pathetic complaints that people like you make.
It really is very sad.

The only public service I would like to see you involved with, is a flogging in the town square!

I must say, being abused by a loser from behind a computer screen is really hurting my feelings!

I bet you hog the middle lane of the motorway, and refuse to give way to other motorists also.

As I said, a sad man, that feels powerful when hes hidden from the world, either locked in his car, or hidden in his bedroom.

Sad.

There are of course many more comments on this site from Matty/Dan, and other employees of Home Delivery Network (or YODEL, as they are now) but I think this should suffice for the time being. This HDNL driver was also one of the more respectful and polite drivers who have commented on here, as at least he didn’t threaten to ‘knock ya wrag-head off…..u dick’ to someone with an Asian name.

For the last eight months I have been trying to sell my house through Main & Main estate agents. I know this isn’t the best time to sell, but needs must. Now, even though the housing market is pretty repressed at the moment, you’d still expect viewings – where the perspective buyers would plead poverty, say they didn’t like the house or just generally waste your time. Yet in those eight months I have had just two viewings.

TWO viewings.

Both of these viewings however, led to offers. This may seem like a very high strike rate, especially when the second viewing actually offered before the viewing. Sadly, both offers turned out to be time-wasters. The first of which waited for a few days before the exchange date to reveal their position of timewasters, costing me several hundred pounds in solicitor’s fees, mortgage fees and search fees on another property.

The second viewing was just a timewaster full stop and he didn’t even seem to know how the whole house buying process worked, making an offer, admitting he didn’t have any money until September and, only then, viewing the house.

Class.

Even the viewing itself was messed up. I stayed home for the viewing, only for nobody to show up. I phoned Main and Main to complain about it and they said they’d look into it. It seems the guy viewing the house had also phoned Main & Main to say he was running late, but Main & Main had no idea what he was on about as they didn’t even know there was a viewing. This despite the fact that they were the ones who arranged it!

Martin Main no less phoned me to ask if I had a viewing at 11:30. He’s asking me? I informed him that no, I hadn’t, it was 11:00am. He informed me that the chap was running late.

What a disorganised way to run an estate agents.

With this second viewing proving a complete waste of time, I had to make the executive decision to put my house up for rent. I decided to use Bridgfords for this because, even though they’re more expensive, they seemed more professional. Sure enough, within a week of Bridgfords listing my property for rent they have arranged five viewings. Not bad. Every viewing they arrange results in me getting a text message conforming the details, and the time and date of the viewing. Main & Main take note.

Now, the fun part comes in Main & Main throwing their hat into the ring for lettings too. They said that I should let them put the house up for rent exclusively for a month and, if they didn’t let it by then, I could use another agent as well. I had no intention of doing this as they’d been fairly useless up until this point; still, I thought I’d use them ‘as well’ as it couldn’t hurt. They said if I dropped the signed terms and conditions into them they’d have the property online for rent within 20 minutes.

Sounds good eh? I dropped the signed Ts&Cs in on Saturday May 14th, where the woman in the office put down her sandwich long enough to say they’d ‘fax it over to the correct office for Monday morning’… hardly 20 minutes.

Then, Monday came and went and still no house for rent online. I checked again Thursday, some FIVE days after I’d handed over the signed Ts&Cs and still there was no property online. At this point Bridgfords were preparing for their third and fourth viewings simultaneously.

Now, Saturday, a full week later I have heard from Main & Main. They have put the house up for rent and in just seven days. God made the heavens and the earth in that time (if you believe that tosh) yet Main & Main can only manage to list a house on a website.

I’m so glad I didn’t use them exclusively. Main and Main over promised and under delivered on their services, taking a week to do what they said would be done in 20 minutes. In that time Bridgfords has arranged five viewings. You get what you pay for I guess.

Those who know me will know I’m not overburdened with a sense of ambition to save the planet. I’m not big on recycling, and only use the brown plastics and glass bin because, if I didn’t, my other bin would fill up before the week was out. I don’t make a point of switching off lights and plug sockets (except of course for the few days following receipt of an electricity bill, like everyone else) and I’m not plagued by worry over global warming.

It’s not that I don’t care; I just have other things to care about first. However, when I received an email last week from Eon concerning their solar panel offer, I was oddly intrigued. In exchange for a minor application fee, of less than £100, they will install solar panels onto the roof of your home and you can benefit from the electricity the panels generate.

This sounds too good to be true, until you ask yourself what does Eon get out of it?

You, the customer, would pay Eon just £99, and you get solar panel installation on your roof worth several thousand pounds. You, sorry your property, are then tied in to a contract to keep the solar panels for around 25 years, during which time your bills will be reduced (according to Eon, by as much as £150 per year).

There’s the rub. Solar panels will generate a heck of a lot more than £150 worth of electricity per year. They’ll generate more than enough electricity to run your whole house, and have enough left over to sell back to the grid. The downside is, of course, the cost of solar panel installation. However, if you can afford a few grand to fit solar panels to the roof of your house, if your house qualifies (because many do not) and if you don’t mind your house looking like a giant solar powered calculator, then you’re onto a winner that will pay back the investment within several years, and the rest after that is pure profit.

So that’s what Eon gets out of it; you, the customer, receives a discount of £150 maximum per year and Eon gets to use your house as a generator for its grid.

No thanks Eon, if I do go for solar panels on my house it will be out of my own pocket, and back into my own pocket – not via yours.

Having seen this video of the Doctor Who Experience, I seriously want to go on it. I’ve been to a Doctor Who exhibition in Cardiff Bay, when they had some props and sets on loan from Blackpool, but this looks the don.

Sometimes Microsoft just sets out to piss me off; I know it. Whether it’s changing the way basic functions work from one version of Outlook to the next, or producing incredibly unhelpful error messages that border on the python-esque.

This latest attempt by Microsoft to rupture my spleen was sparked by my old foe, Microsoft Outlook. This useless attempt at an email program managed to error when trying to send an email, offering the pointless message of ‘cannot send this item’. As if this pitiful attempt at an apology weren’t enough, Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, thought they’d garner some feedback for their endeavours to anger me by further annoying me with the question ‘was this information helpful?’.

Are they deliberately trying to piss me off? ‘Cannot send this item’… ‘was this information helpful?’ – oh yeah, well useful. It’ll come in handy when I have to send another email and know that the reason it hasn’t sent is because it could not send. Thanks Microsoft, you retarded bunch of morons. I now know you’re the ‘go to’ guys for pointless fekking error messages.

Incidentally, if anyone from Microsoft is reading this and they are having trouble understanding sarcasm: no, that error message was not helpful. Did you really think it was when you dreamt it up while trying to evade another bollocking from Bill Gates for the latest cock up within your bug ridden software?

With UK businesses now spending more on Internet advertising than they do on TV advertising, the power of videos via the web is becoming more significant – and this latest advert from Continental shows the quality of advertising online. Rather than just being a video advert, the ad is a mini website, complete with social networking links and a dealer locator. While the video itself may be the sort of short film that would have fitted right in on television, a TV advert such as this could have never afforded itself the level of interaction that this advert does.